


When Water Sang Fire

by pocketsizedquasar



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, au where queequeg survives instead of (or in addition to if u like to be happy) ishmael, that's the ending i choose to believe, the happy ending is they both survived & find each other after this, yeah this is ...just all angst baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketsizedquasar/pseuds/pocketsizedquasar
Summary: Above all else, Queequeg is a fighter, and he has fought his way through worse.





	When Water Sang Fire

**Author's Note:**

> full disclosure, the title and the line in the fic that references the title (...water singing fire...) are both stolen from a short story of the same title, written by Leigh Bardugo.

after the shipwreck, he remembers fire.    
he remembers the searing sun, remembers the burning of his lungs as he's dragged down, down, remembers his last thought a question of how so much water could produce such a scorching flame in his body. it's a terrible way to die, he thinks, drowning on a pyre.    
then suddenly he is on the surface again, gasping for breath, eyes pierced by the hot red glow of the setting sun on the waves.    
he looks around and everything - everyone - is gone.    
for a moment he lets himself panic. lets himself freeze up over the sunken ship and everything gone with it.    
but only a moment.    
above all else, he is a fighter, and he has fought his way through worse. or so he tells himself. he waits for the sun to set, forcing himself to stay afloat, allowing himself to think only of the next breath, next stroke, next wave. by the time darkness falls he has a plan. he knows these waters, knows those stars, knows this ocean like an old lover, and he has never needed a map to find his place in this world.    
so when the light dies and the stars wink into existence, he strikes out towards what he hopes is land, and spares no thought to the graveyard he knows must be below him.    
  
but even the best of fighters has their limits. it takes until morning for him to start feeling the burning in his lungs again, until the unrelenting sun is high above him for his legs and arms to go numb, until the night comes and he can no longer remember which way is sky and which is sea for him to wonder if perhaps it might be better to just give it up here. it is not the worst way to die, he tells himself. he is not sure what will get to him first.    
  
then the wind changes. the current shifts beneath him and he feels the water get warmer and sees the barest hint of something rising from the sea, rimmed by a halo of sunrise, on the end of his vision.    
it could be nothing, a product of his own exhaustion and wishful thinking, a trick of the light.    
or it could be land.    
either way, it's enough to set him fighting again.    
  
when at last he hauls himself onto land, dripping water and blood from cuts he didn't notice he had, the sun has swung low over the horizon again, its light like metal in the forge on the waves. he rolls onto his back, breathless, feeling too heavy and too drained to continue. he has spent the past two days thinking only of reaching land, so now that he is here he finds it all too easy to sink into the wet sand and stay there.   
but he knows that if he doesn't get up now, he  never will, and he did not fight his way through hell and high water just for the privilege of dying on this deserted scrap of sand instead. so he fights his aching, leaden limbs and forces himself to his feet. he staggers forward, weakened by hunger and exhaustion, the sun-warmed sand burning beneath him. he takes stalk of what he has: palm trees, driftwood, a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. the gurgle and hiccup of a stream somewhere out of sight, perhaps in the trees. a knife at his side, the waterproof sealskin pouch miraculously still hanging limply against his hip. a flash of memory crosses his head before he pushes it away. he takes another step, then another, grateful for the cool embrace of nighttime that washes over him.    
  
he is safe now, or at least, relatively so. he has water and food and soon, he thinks, a way off this island.    
as soon as he is sure of this, he crumples to the ground.    
it is only now that he lets himself process the last two days. the wreck, the screams, the not-quite-drowning. the whale, the lines, the water singing fire in his lungs and his veins.    
he thinks of the people finally, and he lets out a wail, a cry that mixes with the wind and waves and water. he thinks of starbuck, that good brave man, how he steered their boat with courage and calm in spite of everything. he thinks of tashtego and how many nights they shared tangled up in the rigging, passing a pipe back and forth, laughing at the strangeness and peculiarities of white men. he thinks of ishmael - kind, clever ishmael, ishmael who talked too much, ishmael who loved so wholly and unconditionally, who gave everything and asked for nothing in return - and he breaks, voice cut in half, bends over like a tree in a storm and clutches his chest and folds beneath the burning weight of loss. it sears a hole in his chest, burns his throat raw, eats greedily away at him from the inside until he has no fight left to give.    
  
the tide comes in, lapping at his sides. cool and forgiving.    
it is then that he remembers the journal. he frantically checks that sealskin pouch, pulls out the small leather-bound book, flips through the worn pages. some of them are stained and faded by splotches of water, but for the most part, it is intact. he clings it to him.    
the journal was ishmael's, full of his strange, sloping handwriting and sketches of the crew and ship and sea. before he had lowered, replacing that old persian's place on the  _ pequod _ ’s final day, ishmael had pressed the little book into his hands, had smiled softly and kissed his fingers as they closed over the pages. he left him with a promise. "i'll see you on the other side, right?"   
he can't read the words, now, but he thumbs through the journal anyway, flinches at the sketches and the scribbled notes and the portraits rendered in careful, loving detail. he does not remember when the tears start up again, only wonders for the second time how all that water can burn so badly.    
it is a long time before he can wrest himself away. he is not a fighter here. just a lost soul, lost and alone with the thought of his ishmael's face burning a hole in his memory.    
  
from then on, he tries to keep himself distracted. as days and months go by the flame dulls, dimmed by time and new faces and places. it is always there, still flares up at the slightest spark, roars back to life when he least expects it, burns him alive day after day only to leave him crawling from the ashes each morning. a flash of dusty yellow hair in a crowd, an artist on the corner of a street, a lover who asks too many questions, is all it takes to send his mind reeling again. he hopes for some relief, but fire has always been greedy and unforgiving.    
and he supposes it was the fire that kept him going, anyways.    



End file.
